
A REVIEW 

of president wilson's administration by hannis 
Taylor, a life-long Democrat, who assails 
mr. wilson as an extreme federalist; as a 
defamer of jefferson; as an abnormally 
ambitious and dangerous revolutionist with 
monarchical tendencies, who is striving to 
build up in this country, in his own selfish 
interest, a political dictatorship entirely 
unfettered by all "promises and cove- 
nants" made by him in party platforms. 



Cicero said: "The foundation of justice is good faith; that is 
to say, a true and unswerving adherence to promises and 
covenants." 



Junius said: "As for Mr. Wedderburn {Lord Loughborough) 
there is something about him even treachery cannot trust." 



An old English chronicler, in speaking of King John, said: 
"He is a King whom no oaths can bind." 




X 






CONTENTS. 



&1U 



PAGE. 

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY SUPERSEDED BY A POLITICAL 

DICTATORSHIP 1 

THE NEW TYRANNY 2 

MR. WILSON'S CONFESSION OF POLITICAL FAITH, IN 
WHICH HE CALLS THE PRESIDENCY "THE REAL 
THRONE OF ADMINISTRATION" 3 

MR. WILSON'S LD3EL ON THE CHARACTER OF JEFFERSON . 5 

MR. WILSON'S REVIVAL OF "THE KING'S SPEECH," AND 
HIS MARKED AVERSION TO PERSONAL CONTACT 
WITH THE PEOPLE 6 

"COURT FAVORITES" INTRODUCED BY MR. WILSON INTO 

AMERICAN POLITICS 7 

MR. WILSON'S FLAGRANT BREACH OF HIS SOLEMN COVE- 
NANT NOT TO BE A CANDIDATE TO SUCCEED HIMSELF . 1 

MR. WHSON'S UNFAITHFUL CONDUCT A WARNING TO 
THE AMERICAN PEOPLE TO LIMIT THE PRESIDENT 
TO A SINGLE TERM 14 

MR. WDLSON'S UTTER FAILURE TO UPHOLD OUR DIGNITY 

AS THE GREATEST OF THE NEUTRAL NATIONS . . 18 

THE MEXICAN HORROR 21 

PRESIDENT CLEVELAND AND PRESIDENT WILSON CON- 
TRASTED 23 

MR. CLEVELAND'S ESTIMATE OF MR. WILSON ... 25 

THE THINGS MR. WILSON STANDS FOR 26 



Washington, D. C, 

September 5, igi6. 

To the National Business Men's 
Republican Committee, 

New York City. 

-Jo 

C5^ Gentlemen : 

I have received your letters in which you say : " May we 
have your name, endorsement, and moral support on 
committee for the election of Charles E. Hughes for Presi- 
dent ? * * * We should be very glad indeed to have you 
make your statement through this committee at the right 
time." Knowing Mr. Hughes to be a wise and progres- 
sive statesman, an exceptionally able jurist, a man of 
affairs, a fearless patriot with the courage of his convic- 
tion, I cannot doubt his ability to deal successfully with 
the mighty problems with which the world in general 
and our country in particular are now confronted. At 
this critical moment in our history, with the war drums 
beating in every quarter, certainly it will be a blessing to 
the country for the administration of a drifting and irreso- 
lute opportunist to be succeeded by that of a resolute 
statesman with positive convictions, whose firmness and 
moral dignity will be the best security for peace. But, 
admitting all that to be true, have I, a life- long Democrat 
who never voted a Republican ticket nor supported a Re- 
publican candidate, the right to support Mr. Hughes? 

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY SUPERSEDED BY A POLITICAL 
DICTATORSHIP. 

I was invited to preside and did preside over a great 
political meeting held at Washington to ratify the first 
nomination of Mr. Wilson; I subscribed to his campaign 
fund; I gave him my cordial support in every way. In 
the only personal letter I ever addressed to him I told 
him I had nothing whatever to ask of him, a promise to 
which I have faithfully adhered. Living as I do at the 



seat of Government, with a large personal acquaintance 
with the leaders of both political parties, I have had 
exceptional opportunities to study at close range every 
act of Mr. Wilson's administration, foreign and domestic. 
I have watched all the currents and counter-currents 
that have influenced that incoherent mass of inconsistent 
acts which he is pleased to call his policy. Thus, against 
my will and political associations, I have been forced to 
conclude that no man who ever filled the Presidential 
office was so opposed to the basic principles for which the 
Democratic party stands as Mr. Wilson ; that he is at heart 
a typical and extreme Federalist, intent upon the abnormal 
exaltation of the powers of the Executive and the humi- 
liation of Congress. To use an epithet he once employed 
in stigmatizing Jefferson, Mr. Wilson is "a philosophical 
radical," intent upon transforming the Presidency of the 
United States into a Political Dictatorship with himself as 
its head. 

THE NEW TYRANNY. 

I have seen Mr. Wilson trample under foot, apparently 
without remorse, the party platform upon which he was 
elected, and which he pledged his sacred honor to the 
people faithfully to carry out. I was near at hand when 
he drafted a second party platform which he sent to St. 
Louis from the White House by one of his agents, with an 
imperious demand that it be accepted by the Convention 
as its act and deed. If he should be re-elected he will 
claim of course the right to repudiate, in whole or in part, 
that second party platform, which is, in a very peculiar 
sense, the work of his own hands. Thus the old Demo- 
cratic party to which I have belonged all my life, and which 
has heretofore expressed its corporate will through rep- 
resentatives chosen from its ranks, has been for the 
moment abolished or at least superseded by a Political 



Dictatorship, created by an arrogant usurper, who has 
demonstrated his utter inability to play the pretentious 
role he has prepared for himself. I cannot, without a 
sacrifice of my self-respect, consent to support this new and 
pre-eminently undemocratic system of political tyranny 
which would be a real menace to the country and the 
Constitution, were it not for the feebleness and inefficiency 
of its creator. The only thing that has ever justified 
dictatorships in the past has been the pre-eminent ability 
and authority, in moments of supreme peril, of the dictator 
himself, qualities whose conspicuous absence has rendered 
Mr. Wilson's unprecedented performances really gro- 
tesque. If our Democratic system of Government is to 
be overthrown, let it be done by a masterful man, not 
by one so timid, so silly as to compromise us in the eyes of 
the whole world by the false and ridiculous assertion 
that we are "too proud to fight." 

MR. WILSON'S CONFESSION OF POLITICAL FAITH, IN WHICH 
HE CALLS THE PRESIDENCY "THE REAL THRONE OF ADMIN- 
ISTRATION." 

Mr. Wilson's bitterest enemy will not dare to assert 
that, in his efforts to exalt abnormally the powers of the 
Presidency and to humiliate Congress, he is at all incon- 
sistent or unfaithful to the political creed which he pro- 
claimed at the beginning of his career as a public man. 
In his well-known work entitled "Congressional Govern- 
ment," 5th ed., his thesis is that the Presidency was in an 
ideal state under the Federalist party, when Congress 
was opened with the spectacle of a cavalcade and Presi- 
dential oration ("a King's Speech" of which he is so fond), 
followed by legislative responses and precessions in imi- 
tation of the ancient pageantry of the British Crown con- 
ducted by the gentleman usher of the Black Rod at West- 
minster. In those good old days Mr. Wilson says: "He 



[the President] was constituted one of the three great 
co-ordinate branches of the Government; his functions 
were made of the highest dignity ; his privileges many and 
substantial * * * and there can be little doubt that, 
had the presidential chair always been filled by men of 
commanding character, of acknowledged ability and of 
thorough political training, it would have continued to 
be a seat of the highest authority and consideration, the 
true center of the Federal structure, the real throne of 
administration, and the frequent source of politics" 
(p. 41). But, according to Mr. Wilson's view, the evil 
days came with the development and assertion of the 
power of the people as vested in Congress — to use his own 
words, the "prestige" of the Presidency was "belittled 
by growth of Congressional power" (p. 341). Again to 
use his own words: "That high office [the Presidency] 
has fallen from its first estate of dignity because its power 
has waned; and its power has waned because the power of 
Congress has become predominant" (p. 43). Mr. Wilson's 
persistent and sincere purpose, since he was clothed by 
Democratic votes with the executive power, has been to 
put in force his Federalist theory of government as ex- 
pounded in his first book, with "the King's Speech" 
in the center of the stage, and with Congress prostrate 
at the feet of the presidential office. Some faithful artist 
should give to the American people a graphic picture of our 
so-called Democratic President as he appears when, 
wrapped in the solitude of his monarchical tendencies, 
he delivers his "King's Speech," from "the real throne of 
administration" to an awe-stricken Congress! It is this 
new condition of things which Mr. Wilson is now asking 
the American people to make permanent. 



MR. WILSON'S LIBEL ON THE CHARACTER OF JEFFERSON. 

As all the world knows, Jefferson assumed the Presi- 
dency firmly resolved to abolish, at once and forever, 
"the King's Speech" to Congress, with all the other mon- 
archical flummery which Mr. Wilson so adores. Jeffer- 
son's now obsolete theory was that "the real throne of 
Administration" should be, not in the White House, but 
in Congress where the voice of the people could be heard. 
He therefore informed both houses in writing on December 
8, 1801, that "the King's Speech" would henceforth be 
superseded by the Presidential Message, which continued, 
as a purely American institution, for more than a century 
until abolished by Mr. Wilson in favor of the monarchical 
usage of Federalist times. When his habitual bitterness 
towards all who oppose him or differ with him is taken into 
account, can we wonder at the cynical and contemptuous 
spirit in which he claims that Jefferson was merely a 
poseur, a deliberately insincere demagogue, an aristocrat 
masquerading in the garb of a leader of the common 
people? In his History of the American People, Vol. IV, 
pp. 3 and 4, Mr. Wilson says: "Mr. Jefferson, an aristo- 
crat and yet a philosophical radical, deliberately practised 
the arts of the politician and exhibited oftentimes the sort 
of insincerity which subtle natures yield to without loss 
of essential integrity. General Jackson was incapable of arts 
or deceptions of any kind. He was, in fact, what his par- 
tisans loved to call him, a man of the people, of the common 
people. Mr. Jefferson was only a patron of the people: 
appealed to the rank and file, believed in them, but shared 
neither their tastes nor their passions." There is a crystal 
lake in the high Sierras so fathomless that it reflects only 
the image of the traveler who looks into its depths. And 
so, when the autocrat, with monarchical tendencies, who 
now misrepresents the party Jefferson founded, looks into 
that fathomless mind he can not comprehend, he sees only 



his own image, which he has unconsciously painted. What 
Mr. Wilson has said so viciously and so unnecessarily of 
the dead Jefferson, whose shoes he is now attempting to 
fill, is simply a precious bit of self-revelation. The 
"aristocrat," the "philosophical radical," who "deliber- 
ately practices the arts of the politician" is now the Presi- 
dent of the United States, seeking re-election in defiance 
of his solemn pledge not to be a candidate to succeed 
himself. 

MR. WILSON'S REVIVAL OF "THE KING'S SPEECH," AND HIS 
MARKED AVERSION TO PERSONAL CONTACT WITH THE 
PEOPLE. 

If specific proof is demanded of that assertion, it is to be 
found in Mr. Wilson's sudden and arbitrary abolition of 
the Inaugural Ball and of the New Year's receptions 
which, since the foundation of the Government, have 
been the sacramental ties binding the Presidency to the 
rank and file of the people. Even the cold and exclusive 
Adamses were willing to mingle with the people at inau- 
gural balls and New Year's receptions. But Mr. Wilson 
cannot go that far. He has become so proud, so pre- 
tentious, so monarchical in his habits of life, that he con- 
siders it necessary, even in the summer season, to set up 
"the real throne of administration" in the great palace of 
Shadow Lawn, the vulgar and ostentatious creation of a 
multi-millionaire. 

Since Mr. Wilson's abrupt and ruthless abolition of 
the Inaugural Ball and New Year's receptions — institu- 
tions as old as the Government itself — the uninvited 
masses of the people have been deprived of the privilege 
of approaching, on such occasions, "the real throne of 
administration." Those who enter the White House, 
when entertainments are given, must be specially invited 
by a gilded and embossed card, delivered, not through the 
mails, but by Presidential messengers. And even when 



the President delivers "the King's Speech" in the hall of 
the House of Representatives, the general public is severely 
excluded. No one can go even to the galleries without a 
special card of admission. We may confidently expect that, 
after the inauguration of the new President on the 4th 
of March next, he will announce at once, as Jefferson did, 
the abolition of "the King's Speech," with all the mon- 
archical flummery attending it; and the revival of the 
Inaugural Ball and New Year's receptions, which had 
become cherished parts of our national life. 

"COURT FAVORITES" INTRODUCED BY MR. WILSON INTO 
AMERICAN POLITICS. 

After the abolition of the two Democratic institutions 
just mentioned, Mr. Wilson resolved to fill the vacuum 
not only by the revival of "the King's Speech" but by the 
introduction into American politics of "Court Favorites," 
an institution imported into England from Scotland by 
James I, a monarch often spoken of as the intellectual 
and political progenitor of the dictator under whom we 
now live. Following in the path of his great progenitor, 
Mr. Wilson drove from his cabinet, at a time when they 
were most needed by the country, the two dominating 
minds that refused to bow to his insolent and self-seeking 
dictatorship. Thus the way was cleared for the com- 
pletion of that system of political absolutism under 
which our Government is now carried on by a group 
of obscure and inefficient individuals — Mr. Wilson's per- 
sonal creations, "dependent ministers," who are "mere 
agents of the King's will." 

At the head of "the Court Favorites" thus introduced 
by Mr. Wilson into American politics stands his Duke of 
Buckingham, Colonel Edward Makepeace House, con- 
nected only through his middle name with the august 
office of Ambassador of Ambassadors, with which he could 



8 

not possibly have been associated through even the remotest 
knowledge of diplomacy or international law. We know 
that Carr and Villiers were elevated to supreme power by 
James I by reason of their personal beauty, but, as Colonel 
House does not seem to possess that quality, the source of 
the unbounded influence of this obscure and untrained 
person over the President of the United States is a sealed 
mystery which it seems must remain forever unbroken. At 
a critical time in our diplomatic history, when an unselfish, 
patriotic and unfettered President would have summoned 
Mr. Olney, Mr. Choate, Mr. John Bassett Moore, Senator 
O'Gorman, or Senator Hoke Smith, Mr. Wilson turned to 
an obscure personal favorite, unknow to the people and 
never trusted by them, who is about as well adapted to 
the delicate functions of high diplomacy as a cobbler to 
the work of a mathematical astronomer. No great office 
is ever rilled in the cabinet, on the bench, or elsewhere, 
without loud suggestions of the dominating influence of 
Colonel House; and when the office of Secretary of State 
was made vacant by the resignation of Mr. Bryan, the 
newspapers heralded the fact, never denied from the White 
House, that it was entirely at the Colonel's disposal if he 
would deign to accept it. Mr. Wilson is so obsessed by the 
" Court Favorite" idea, that he does not seem to understand 
that the great offices of state are not his personal per- 
quisites to be bestowed upon obscure and incomptent 
individuals, entirely unconnected with our public life, 
simply because it suits his personal interest and conveni- 
ence so to bestow them, but the property of the people held 
only in trust by him for their benefit. 

Mr. Hughes has done well in denouncing in his cam- 
paign speeches the indefensible selfishness which has 
prompted Mr. Wilson to fill very many of the highest 
offices in the Government, at home and abroad, with 
fameless and incompetent persons, to many of whom he 



is obligated by reason of political services of a journalistic 
character. All the world knows that, at the most critical 
moment in our diplomatic history, our diplomatic service 
has been weighted down, with a few exceptions, by such 
inexperienced and obscure persons as were never before 
accredited to the great posts. If any one is sceptical on 
that subject, let him but turn his eyes to the capitals of 
France and the British Empire, where the most critical 
diplomatic work is now being carried on. Mr. Wilson, 
who has thus dragged our diplomatic service down to a 
point never reached before, refused at the beginning of 
his administration to give either aid or comfort to a bill 
carefully devised for its improvement, and introduced 
in the House by Mr. Henry of Texas, Chairman of the 
Committee on Rules, arid in the Senate by Senator Bacon 
of Georgia, then Chairman of the Senate Committee on 
Foreign Relations. But Mr. Wilson's capital offense in 
the rewarding of personal retainers who served him in the 
public press is represented by his grossly unlawful eleva- 
tion to the headship of the Government of the District 
of Columbia of a journalist with no possible connection 
with the District in the way of residence or property, 
in open defiance of a statute declaring that only an actual 
and bona fide resident of the District, a home man, shall 
be eligible to that office. The question of Mr. Newman s 
eligibility has been tried by the courts and juries of the District, 
which have exclusive jurisdiction ovER it, and it has 
been solemnly adjudged by those tribunals that he be ousted 
from his office on account of his lack of legal capacity to hold 
it. And yet, in open defiance of such judgments and verdict, 
Mr. Newman has been kept in office by Mr. Wilson ; and 
the people of the District of Columbia have been thus 
deprived by his act, aided by a technical flaw in legal pro- 
cedure, of the only scrap of local self-government they 
possessed, simply because the President of the United States 



IO 

owed a political debt to a political retainer. Surely the 
new President will not be slow in redressing this outrage, 
v/hose author seems to be devoid of all sense of legality. 

MR. WILSON'S FLAGRANT BREACH OF HIS SOLEMN COVENANT 
NOT TO BE A CANDIDATE TO SUCCEED HIMSELF. 

Mr. Wilson enjoys the very unenviable distinction of 
being the first President ever accused, so far as I know, of 
breaking the solemn "promises and covenants" made with 
the people in the party platform upon which he sought and 
obtained their votes. Under our rigid and complex con- 
stitution the honor system, under which the people give 
their suffrages in exchange for the "promises and cove- 
nants" given by nominees in party platforms, is at once 
vital and fundamental. Senator N orris hit the nail on 
the head when he said in a speech delivered at Washington 
a few months ago: " The greatest evil in American politics 
today is the dishonest nominee." The question of questions 
involved in the approaching election is this: Is Mr. 
Wilson a dishonest nominee? Despite the labored and 
sophistical efforts made by his partizans and apologists to 
obscure the real facts involved, they are too plain to be 
misunderstood. Unless it is legitimate to argue, as De 
Ouincy did, that "murder is a fine art," it is unnecessary 
to say that, when a nomination is accepted under our 
American honor system, the nominee pledges his sacred 
honor to observe every part and clause of the party plat- 
form as completely as if he took an oath to that effect in 
a court of justice. Such has always been the distinct 
understanding of the American people since our honor 
system began. The plain facts in Mr. Wilson's case are 
these: The Democratic platform of 191 2, to every clause 
of which he solemnly pledged himself, provided: "We 
favor a single Presidential term, and to that end urge the 
adoption of an amendment to the Constitution making 



II 



the President of the United States ineligible for re-election, 
and we pledge the candidate of this convention to this prin- 
ciple." If ever a man had the right to speak for another, 
Mr. Bryan, the political creator of Mr. Wilson, who took 
the nomination away from the Hon. Champ Clark in 
order to give it to him, had the right not only to speak for 
Mr. Wilson but to bind him by his words. As his ac- 
credited representative and spokesman, Mr. Bryan can- 
vassed the country in his interest, making many speeches, 
in all of which he declared to the people what his [Mr. 
Wilson's] understanding was as to his candidacy for a 
second term. At a great meeting held at Indianapolis on 
October 17, 191 2, Mr. Bryan said: "We present him 
[Mr. Wilson] not only qualified in every way, but we 
present him pledged to a single term, that he may be your 
President and spend no time dividing patronage in order 
to secure delegates ; that he need spend no time in planning 
for re-election; that he may give you all his thought and 
all his heart and all his energy. I believe that when a man 
is lifted by his countrymen to this pinnacle of power he ought 
to tear from his heart every thought of ambition and on his 
bended knees consecrate his term to his country s service. 
That is our ideal President, and we present to you a man 
who measures up to that ideal." I was in Indianapolis 
at the time, and heard those words as they were spoken 
by Mr. Bryan to at least seven thousand people assembled 
in front of the State House. When that part of Mr. 
Bryan's speech, pledging Mr. Wilson to a single term, was 
republished in Collier's for November 6, 191 5, I called his 
attention to it, and he said that he had seen it. So far 
from questioning the accuracy of the publication, he 
added that he had said the same thing in all his speeches 
everywhere. Will any honest man undertake to say 
that after Mr. Wilson permitted Mr. Bryan, as his ac- 
credited representative and spokesman, to canvas the 



12 

country and pledge him to a single term, as his [Mr. 
Wilson's] construction of the Baltimore platform, he was 
not as completely bound in honor as if he had made that 
pledge to the people in his own words? If that is not so, 
then the political morality of Machiavelli governs here; 
then the American honor system is at an end ; then all such 
pledges as Mr. Bryan gave to the people as Mr. Wilson's 
representative are absolutely worthless. Nobody has 
ever claimed that Mr. Wilson protested, at the time, that Mr. 
Bryan was not authorized to pledge him to a single term, 
as his [Mr. Wilson's] construction of the Baltimore platform. 
Painful and humiliating as the fact must be to every 
high-minded Democrat, it cannot be denied that, despite 
the solemn pledges made to the people by Mr. Bryan in 
his name, Mr. Wilson, while President-elect, set himself 
to work to find some loop-hole through which to escape 
from the double obligations by which he was bound hand 
and foot. A sensitive mind, fully conscious of the obliga- 
tions of "promises and covenants," would have been 
appalled by the difficulties then in the way of such an 
undertaking. On June 4, 191 2, Mr. Clayton, of Ala- 
bama, as Chairman of the Judiciary Committee of the 
House, had offered an amendment to the Constitution 
making the President ineligible for a second term. It 
was that pending amendment to which the Baltimore 
Convention that met on June 25th directly referred. Mr. 
Wilson was therefore bound by every principle of honor 
and of duty to insist that the then pending amendment, 
to which he was pledged, not only by the platform but 
by the solemn promises given to the people by Mr. Bryan 
in his name, should be made at once a part of the funda- 
mental law. Under such circumstances what did he 
actually do? Did he strive to secure the adoption of the 
Amendment, or did he deliberately and actively intrigue to 
defeat itf Let the answer to that question come from his 



13 

able and experienced advocate and apologist, Mr. George 
Harvey, who, in attempting to make a case for him in 
The North American Review for February, 191 6, made in- 
stead admissions that render all future attempts to defend 
him hopeless. Mr. Harvey said: "but after the election 
of Mr. Wilson upon a platform pledging the candidate to 
' the principle' avowed, the proposition was revived in the 
Senate, and on February 1st, 191 3, it was adopted by that 
body, seventeen anti- Roosevelt Republicans voting affirma- 
tively and only one Democrat, Mr. Shively of Indiana, 
voting in the negative. The sentiment of the House was 
overwhelmingly in favor of the resolution, but the Demo- 
cratic leaders, feeling that their newly elected President 
was entitled to consultation upon a matter of so much 
importance and having no late information respecting his 
attitude, deferred action untie his views coued be 

ASCERTAINED * * * MEANWHIEE THE PRESIDENT- 
ELECT INTERVENED IN THE LETTER TO Mr. A. MlTCHELL 

Palmer dated February 13, which was duly ex- 
hibited to Chairman Clayton and other prominent 
representatives, who promptly bowed to the wish 
of their new leader and buried the resolution." 

Thus, in by far the most studied and formal effort ever 
made to apologize for Mr. Wilson's wanton conduct in 
this regard, his advocate admits that the Amendment, to 
whose adoption he was so solemnly bound by a double 
pledge, after its adoption by the Senate, was defeated in 
the House, where the sentiment "was overwhelmingly in 
favor" of it, by the active personal solicitation of Mr. Wil- 
son, intriguing through a letter directed to Mr. A. Mitchell 
Palmer, not as an in-dividual but as Chairman of the Demo- 
cratic caucus. In describing that letter, Collier's for 
November 6, 1915, said: "Mr. Wilson dictated a long 
reply, about 1,500 words in length, and sent it to Repre- 
sentative A. Mitchell Palmer of Pennsylvania, then 



Chairman of the Democratic caucus." Thus even Mr. 
Wilson's advocates and apologists are forced to admit 
that the machinery of the Democratic Party was actively 
employed by him to defeat its and his solemn pledge to the 
people to limit the Presidency to a single term. 

MR. WILSON'S UNFAITHFUL CONDUCT A WARNING TO THE 
AMERICAN PEOPLE TO LIMIT THE PRESIDENT TO A 
SINGLE TERM. 
Mr. Wilson has demonstrated by his conscienceless 
conduct, as described above, the lengths to which an 
abnormally ambitious and selfish man, lustful of power 
and office, may go in chasing the phantom of a second 
term. He trampled upon those things which most men 
hold most dear by actively intriguing to destroy the single 
term plank of the Baltimore Platform, through the use of 
Democratic party machinery, even before his first term began. 
How pathetic and humiliating it all is when we recall 
Mr. Bryan's golden words: "We present him [Mr. Wil- 
son] not only qualified in every way, but we present him 
pledged to a single term, that he may be your President and 
spend no time dividing patronage in order to secure dele- 
gates; that he need spend no time in planning for re- 
election ; that he may give you all his thought and all his 
heart and all his energy. That is our ideal President, and 
we present to you a man who measures up to that ideal." 
Honest and noble-minded as he is, how sore at heart 
Mr. Bryan must be when he looks down on his fallen idol 
who has done all the things he said he would not do. The 
best work Mr. Bryan has ever done has been embodied 
in his efforts to protect his country against the terrible 
and growing evils of a second term. In the Indianapolis 
speech, in which he pledged Mr. Wilson to a single term, 
he said: "Eighteen years ago when I was a young man, 
a member of Congress, I introduced a resolution submit- 
ting an amendment limiting the President to a single 



15 

term in office. Three times when I was a candidate for 
office I announced immediately after my nomination that 
if I were elected I would not be a candidate for a second 
term." Mr. Wilson has manifested his ingratitude for 
all Mr. Bryan has done for him not only by forcing him 
out of his cabinet and becoming a candidate for a second 
term, but by wrecking the cause for which Mr. Bryan has 
battled so long and so unselfishly. In Mr. Wilson's 
so-called St. Louis platform there is not a word about a 
second term. Those who understand Mr. Bryan's character 
know perfectly well that he has a courage that can, when 
aroused, rise to the height of any occasion. The great 
moral and patriotic duty of his life is upon him now. He 
knows, as no other man knows, how wretched and faith- 
less Mr. Wilson's conduct has been in violating his solemn 
pledge not to seek a second term. He therefore owes it 
to himself, to his reputation for consistency, to stand by 
the gospel he has preached so long and so forcefully. He 
owes it to the American people, he owes it to truth and 
justice, to rise in his high place in this Nation and, sink- 
ing partisanship in patriotism, denounce Mr. W T ilson's 
candidacy because he knows he is a "dishonest nominee." 
In the presence of Mr. Wilson's broken vows to the people, 
for whose performances he solemnly pledged himself as 
guarantor, how can Mr. Bryan support him for a second 
term? M. Clemenceau certainly had Mr. Wilson in mind 
when, in defining a symbol, he said: "A man about whom 
the people still believe what was never true." 

Is it possible that such a man as Mr. Wilson, who, to 
promote his inordinate and selfish ambition, has deliber- 
ately violated the solemn "promises and covenants" for 
whose performance he plighted his sacred honor to the 
American people, can, for a second time, be elevated by 
their votes to the chief magistry of this Nation? That is 
now the question of questions, the issue of issues, which, 



i6 

as it involves the moral dignity of the people of the United 
States, can neither be concealed nor ignored. Mr. Wil- 
son's partisans within the Democratic party, who have 
been recreant in their duty to the ancient and historic 
organization which Jefferson founded, may shout as they 
will, but — 

"Nor florid prose nor honeyed lines of rhyme, 
Can blazon evil deeds, or consecrete a crime." 

No matter whether Mr. Bryan does his duty or not, 
the American people must and will do theirs'. For more 
than thirty years I have made a special study of our 
complex American Constitution; for the last fourteen 
years I have lived at Washington, where I have watched 
its practical workings, day by day, just as a machinist 
might watch the movements of a Corliss engine. In the 
light of that study and experience I do not hesitate to 
say that, in my humble judgment, the gravest defect in 
our National Constitution, that brings more evils to the 
people than all others combined, is represented by the 
lack of that amendment prohibiting a second term which 
Mr. Wilson's selfish ambition has for the moment defeated. 
His almost insane desire to succeed himself has deprived 
him of the power to be really useful at a critical moment 
in our history. His ceaseless pursuit of that will-o'-the- 
wisp called a second term has led him into all kinds of 
bogs and morasses; it has entangled him in hopeless 
inconsistencies; it has put him on both sides of nearly 
every public question; it has forced him to do things no 
other public man would have dared to do. The typical 
illustration of course is his sudden and violent change of 
front as to the exemption of American vessels from tolls 
in a canal built by American brains and American money 
through American territory. Representative Meeker of 
Missouri says Mr. Wilson is "the greatest President Great 
Britain ever had." I have not a word to say now 



17 

as to the merits of the tolls question, as to which good 
and wise men have disagreed. It is not necessary to go 
farther than the statement that honesty and decency 
forbade Mr. Wilson's departure from the positive man- 
date on that subject of the Baltimore platform, which he 
specially and earnestly advocated before the people in 
order to catch heir votes. Then, when the wind shifted, 
and it appeared as if more votes were to be had by facing 
the other way, he turned about with a ruthless cynicism 
that would have put Machiavelli to the blush, entirely 
ignoring that part of the Baltimore platform, repeated in 
speeches by him, which declares that " Our pledges are made 
to be kept while in office, as well as to be relied upon during the 
<jr npaign." He thus demonstrated that, like King John, 
he is also ' ' a King whom no oaths can bind ; ' ' that he is 
a man whom "even treachery cannot trust." At one 
time Mr. Wilson gave us brilliant and conclusive reasons 
why the sending of arms and munitions into Mexico, 
which may be used against ourselves, was a wrong not 
to be tolerated. Then, when the wind shifted, he demon- 
strated in the same brilliant and conclusive way that such 
reasons have no real value at all. I wonder if he ever 
remembers, when engaged in these perilous acrobatic 
performances, which only a sublime and fatalistic vanity 
could inspire, the terms in which he denounced Jefferson, 
"an aristocrat and yet a philosophical radical," who, he 
says, "deliberately practised the arts of the politician, and 
yet exhibited oftentimes the sort of insincerity which subtle 
natures yield to without the loss of essential integrity." Can 
the American people so stretch its mantle of Christian 
charity as to bring the "subtle" Mr. Wilson within his 
own saving clause? Can they force themselves to believe 
that he has been able to commit his graver offenses "with- 
out the loss of essential integrity"? 



i8 

MR. WILSON'S UTTER FAILURE TO UPHOLD OUR DIGNITY AS 
THE GREATEST OF THE NEUTRAL NATIONS. 

Instead of offending all true Democrats by assailing the 
"essential integrity of Jefferson;" instead of abusing that 
genius and patriot as "an aristocrat," as a "philosophical 
radical," as "a patron of the people," Mr. Wilson should 
have devoted himself more carefully to the study of the 
great Virginian's mighty work in laying the foundations 
of the modern law of neutrality, of which he seems to 
have only a hazy notion. When the European nations 
were, then as now, tearing each other to pieces on land 
and sea, Jefferson was wise and thrifty enough to per- 
ceive that the American clipper ships then decorating 
our Atlantic seaboard could do a great business, as they 
did, if an enforceable law of neutrality could be created. 
Really the greatest of Jefferson's achievements, from a 
practical point of view, is represented by his part in the 
creation of the modern law of neutrality, by which the 
world has been governed from his time down to its recent 
abolition by the British and German Empires. And yet 
Jefferson's work, intellectual as it was, would have been 
a failure had it not been for the stern moral dignity of 
Washington, who understood that the very essence of 
neutrality depends upon an unswerving impartiality that 
refuses to favor one belligerent as against the other. 
When Jefferson, full of love and partisan feeling for 
France, showed signs of sympathy for Genet's design to 
make our shores bases for French expeditions against 
Great Britain, Washington planted his great foot on the 
earth and said, No! He refused to play favorites; he 
refused to make fish of one and flesh of another. 

If Mr. Wilson had only been wise enough, and honest 
enough to learn that great yet simple lesson from the 
master character, how much higher in the respect of the 
world should we stand today! I sympathize with him 



19 

in his partiality for the Allies. I also have British blood 
in my veins, but not so much as he has — one half. Mr. Wil- 
son constantly forgets, when he expresses distrust of 
people with foreign blood in their veins, what a typical 
hyphenated citizen he himself really is. If I were in power 
I know I would be tempted, just as Jefferson was, to do 
very unlawful things for great and glorious France, never 
so splendid, so heroic, as now. But all such weakness is 
unworthy when the duty of neutrality is involved. Mr. 
Wilson should have refused, as Washington did, to play 
favorites; he has had no right, legal or moral, to be the 
secret ally of the Allies, while claiming to be neutral. 
If I were to yield to my personal feelings I would favor 
France and Great Britain as against Germany; but I 
would not favor either at the expense of the neutral 
commerce of the United States, which Mr. Wilson has 
shamefully failed to defend. We have been outraged 
and trampled upon on the high seas by both the German 
and British Empires without any real satisfaction from 
either. The mangled bodies of American men, women, 
and children, one of them of my own family connection, 
have floated away unavenged from the wreck of the 
Lusitania; the cotton of the South, the food products 
of the Middle West, the mineral products of the Far 
West have been unlawfully seized by the British Navy as 
contraband; the mails have been violated, without any - 
substantial redress. Mr. Wilson does not seem to under- 
stand that the primary purpose of our diplomatic sys- 
tem is to obtain actual redress for wrongs done to our citi- 
zens, and not to put into circulation rhetorical diplomatic 
literature whose force would be double if its volume were 
reduced by more than one half. We have had notes, notes, 
notes, like Amos Cottle's poem, with "lines forty thousand, 
cantos twenty-five;" but we have had no actual redress of 
any practical kind. To the intolerable wrongs inflicted 



20 

on the persons and property of our neutral and unoffending 
citizens by the British and German Empires, we have only 
responded with paper bullets bearing the pathetic inscrip- 
tion, "Too proud to fight!" 

From the foundation of the Government it has been 
considered the high duty of the President to appoint to 
the office of Secretary of State the foremost statesman 
and diplomatist of the country. Washington was not too 
proud to lean upon Jefferson; Jefferson upon Madison; 
Taylor upon Webster; Pierce upon Marcy; Lincoln upon 
Seward; Grant upon Hamilton Fish; Hayes upon Evarts; 
Cleveland upon Olney ; McKinley upon John Hay ; Roose- 
velt upon Elihu Root. But at the most critical moment 
in our diplomatic history Mr. Wilson feels that he is 
omnipotent enough to get along with Mr. Robert Lansing 
and Colonel Edward Makepeace House ! Who can wonder 
that Mr. Hughes, in arraigning Mr. Wilson, should say: 
" If we are to have a Secretary of State, we want a man who 
will stand before the world as a man of learning, of skill, 
of experience, of power." Mr. Wilson's greatest weakness 
is his sublime and flamboyant egotism, which deludes 
him with the fancy that he is strong enough to clear the 
executive stage of all possible rivals so that he may star 
alone. He thinks that as the maker of ' ' the King's speech' ' 
he should be "the whole show;" he does not believe there 
is glory enough for all; he thinks that all power and 
importance should be vested in himself, no matter how 
much the country may suffer thereby. Thus he presents 
the pathetic image of a vain and vacillating opportunist 
struggling in a bog, and refusing to be aided by stronger 
and more experienced men, because he is unwilling that 
anybody should share with him the glory of doing things. 
What would happen if Mr. Wilson should suffer a genuine 
spasm of patriotic unselfishness, free from all self-seeking, 
self-glorification of any kind? 



21 



THE MEXICAN HORROR. 

No American can look upon the Mexican horror without 
a sense of pain ; no Democrat can look upon it without a 
sense of humiliation, because the grave condition of things 
existing when President Wilson entered into office has 
been converted into a prolonged drama of death and 
destruction by his unprecedented and offensive inter- 
meddling with the internal government of a friendly state, 
in open defiance of the most elementary principle of 
international law. As Mr. Wilson took into his own hands 
the management of this business by the appointment of 
his special and confidential agent, Mr. John Lind (the 
President's "personal spokesman and representative" in 
the regulation of the internal politics of Mexico) , he made 
himself directly and personally responsible for all that 
has happened since that time. He opened Pandora's 
Box when he dared to trample upon that elementary prin- 
ciple of the law of nations, which sternly forbids one 
state to intermeddle in the internal politics of another, 
by applying that grossly unlawful pressure that resulted 
in the deposition of the de facto President, Huerta, the 
only man capable of maintaining order, who had been 
actually recognized by Great Britain, France, Germany, 
Russia, Spain, and Japan. It is almost incredible that 
an American President, claiming to be an upholder of the 
law of nations, should have dared to intermeddle with the, 
internal politics of Mexico not only by attempting to 
destroy its de facto ruler, recognized as de jure by many of 
the world powers, but by declaring that such ruler would 
not be permitted to be a candidate for the office of Presi- 
dent at the election which Mr. Wilson demanded. As 
there is no precedent for such flagrant and insulting inter- 
meddling in the internal politics of a friendly state, can 
we wonder at the Mexican hatred of Americans, which 
Mr. Wilson's unlawful conduct has so intensified? 



22 

After deposing Huerta, President Wilson recognized, 
in his place and stead, General Carranza, who seems to 
revel in the destruction of American lives and property, 
and in the pitiless persecution of the Catholic Church. 
I have had from the lips of one of the sufferers, a 
religious born in the South, a description of the condi- 
tions that have driven from their convents many nuns 
who were compelled to put on secular dress and to seek 
shelter in Catholic homes from outrages, too terrible for 
words, inflicted upon their associates. I have talked with 
an exiled Mexican Bishop forced under the Carranza 
regime into hiding for months in humble abodes in order 
to save his life. Will Mr. Wilson's blindest partisan 
contend that any good thing has so far resulted from his 
unlawful and offensive intermeddling with the internal 
affairs of this friendly state? When our citizens have 
appealed to him for protection they have been told to 
fly for their lives; when they have asked him to obtain 
indemnity for their losses they have been comforted only 
by a vague and icy smile. 

When the future historian undertakes to reduce to 
some kind of order Mr. Wilson's bewildering and fantastic 
performances in Mexico, he will be forced to confess that, 
in one particular at least, he has been brilliantly consis- 
tent — that whenever he has professed to do one thing 
he has invariably done the opposite. After a correct and 
ostentatious declaration that the Mexican people have 
the right to fight it out among themselves; that we have 
no right to intervene in their internal affairs, he set on 
foot two armed interventions, both of which have ended 
in pitifully lame and impotent conclusions. After the 
publication of a sound state paper setting forth the best 
of reasons why we should not sell arms and munitions 
to neighbors, actively engaged in disturbing our peace 
by cutting their own throats, he reversed himself by 



23 

expressly authorizing what he had sternly condemned. 
On July 10, 19 1 5, a great American newspaper stated the 
case fairly when it said: "The only Mexican since Diaz 
able to keep order in Mexico City was Huerta. President 
Wilson declared a sort of personal war on him, with the 
armed forces of the United States. Mr. Wilson drove 
Sefior Huerta out of Mexico and is now keeping him out, 
while permitting the other Mexican revolutionary leaders 
and plunderers to come and go freely. The export of 
ammunition to Mexico is permitted, then forbidden, then 
repermitted in spasmodic fits and starts." That "spas- 
modic fits and starts" policy represents the only contribu- 
tion actually made by a nervous, fidgety, and irresolute 
opportunist, who has aggravated a difficult situation, 
first, by a wanton disregard of an elementary principle 
of international law; second, by the lack of that kind of 
consistency and force which a commanding President 
would have supplied. 

PRESIDENT CLEVELAND AND PRESIDENT WILSON 
CONTRASTED. 

In the famous Venezuelan case, President Cleveland, 
backed by his great Secretary of State, Mr. Olney, demon- 
strated what a President of real moral dignity and author- 
ity could accomplish through unbending resolution, even 
against the greatest of the world powers, at a time when 
our military and naval unpreparedness was at its height. 
Diplomacy draws its strength not so much from the man 
behind the gun as from the man behind the pen, when 
that man, speaking not as a timid rhetorician but as the 
real mouthpiece of a great compelling nation like our own, 
is known to be one who means what he says. Great 
Britain bowed at the critical time in question to our 
primacy in the New World, because Lord Salisbury knew 
that when President Cleveland put that high and inevi- 



24 

table construction on the Monroe Doctrine, which Mr. 
Wilson is industriously striving to undermine, he was 
ready to maintain it even at the cost of our last dollar 
and our last man. President Cleveland never said once: 
"We are too proud to fight." 

Since Mr. Wilson has forced an unwilling Congress 
to crown 95,000,000 of American citizens with a bitter 
National humiliation through the abject surrender of 
their sacred rights to the imperious demands of a mere 
handful, it is impossible not to recall the splendid courage 
of President Cleveland who, in 1894, with the great Richard 
Olney at his side as Attorney-General, appealed under like 
circumstances to the courts, whose final judgment was 
recorded in the Debs case, in which the Supreme Court 
of the United States said : "The strong arm of the National 
Government may be put forth to brush away all obstruc- 
tions to the freedom of interstate commerce or the trans- 
portation of the mails. If the emergency arises, the army 
of the Nation and all its militia are at the service of the 
Nation to compel obedience to its laws." With the entire 
force and authority of the American people at his com- 
mand, Mr. Wilson preferred to display upon his banner the 
now familiar device — "Surrender!" Thus on Sunday 
morning last occurred the most abject moment in the life 
of this Republic when the chiefs of the four railroad 
Brotherhoods, who had frightened and coerced the President 
of the United States by a threat, put into his hand the four 
pens (their trophies of victory) with which he signed, as 
his act and deed, the fatal admission that the Govern- 
ment of this Nation, while in his keeping, had lost the right 
to think and act as a free agent ! 

"One hour of Grover Cleveland or Theodore Roosevelt 
would have settled the question," said Representative Gillett 
of Massachusetts, "but President Wilson listened to the 
voice of expediency and failed in his duty." 



25 
MR. CLEVELAND'S ESTIMATE OF MR. WILSON. 
What a blessing it would be if we could have Mr. 
Cleveland now! But as we cannot, we must be content 
to profit by his estimate, very carefully made, of the only 
Democrat who has occupied the White House since that 
time. For some years Mr. Cleveland lived at Princeton 
while Mr. Wilson was at the head of that institution, 
participating with him in its management. Thus he was 
able to study the President of Princeton at close range, 
and to see him from every angle. In the light of such 
intimate knowledge the great ex-President made a very 
careful estimate of Mr. Wilson, which he deliberately 
expressed at Princeton in no vague or uncertain terms. I 
therefore appeal to every Cleveland democrat to ascertain 
what that estimate was, and to weigh it well, before he 
consents to vote for the re-election of a man who solemnly 
pledged himself neither to seek nor accept a second term. 
By his bad faith in breaking the solemn "promises and 
covenants" contained in the platform upon which the 
people elected him; by his cold-blooded selfishness in 
building up a personal and political dictatorship upon the 
ruins of the party that trusted him, Mr. Wilson has fully 
confirmed all that Mr. Cleveland said of him. It would 
be a sad commentary on human nature if such an unprece- 
dented line of presidential conduct had not aroused in the 
minds of the real leaders of the Democratic party, many 
of whom refused to attend "the cut-and-dried " St. 
Louis Convention (the ripe fruit of Mr. Wilson's political 
dictatorship), a sense of indignation and revolt, which is 
only kept down by a noble spirit of loyalty and self- 
abnegation that impels them to believe that the future 
of the party might be injured by the dethroning, at this 
critical moment, of a leader whom they despise personally 
and distrust politically. 



26 

THE THINGS MR. WILSON STANDS FOR. 

As Mr. Wilson was careful to define beforehand in 
books most of the political theories and vagaries he has 
put into practice since his elevation to the Presidency, it 
is very easy to epitomize precisely the things he now 
stands for. In the first place, he stands for the new and 
revolting political gospel which teaches that bad faith 
should be made the basis of American politics by dispensing 
the President of the United States from the performance 
of the solemn "promises and covenants" made by him 
to the people in party platforms; in the second, for the 
contention that the Presidency is "the true center of the 
Federal structure, the real throne of administration , and the 
frequent source of policies;" in the third, for the conten- 
tion that "that high office [the Presidency] has fallen 
from its first estate of dignity because its power has 
waned, and its power has waned because the power of 
Congress has become predominant;" in the fourth, for 
the contention that the old condition of things should be 
restored by making the Congress a subordinate and 
dependent body subject to the direction and control of 
the Executive; in the fifth, for the contention that "the 
King's speech" should be reestablished in the place of the 
Presidential message which the "aristocrat," the "philo- 
sophical radical," the "patron of the people," Jefferson, 
inaugurated; in the sixth, for the contention that the 
President should not mingle with the uninvited masses 
of the people at Inaugural Balls and New Year's Day 
receptions; in the seventh, for the contention that a 
Democratic President should be, ex officio, the political 
dictator of his party ; in the eighth, for a timid and vacil- 
lating foreign policy based on the false and humiliating 
assumption that we are "too proud to fight;" in the 
ninth, for the most stupendous annual appropriations 
ever made in the history of the American people. The 



27 

words of the Baltimore platform are these : "We denounce 
the profligate waste of money wrung from the people by 
oppressive taxation through the lavish appropriations of 
Republican Congresses, which have kept taxes high and 
reduced the purchasing power of the people's toil. We 
demand a return to that simplicity and economy which 
befits a democratic government and a reduction in the 
number of useless offices, the salaries of which drain the 
substance of the people." To that burning denunciation 
the Republican National Committee has just made this 
laconic and crushing reply : "The total ' appropriations' of 
the last Republican Congress (two sessions) amounted to 
$2,054,000,000. The appropriations of this Congress (two 
sessions) will total at least $3,400,000,000. The increase 
in the appropriations due to preparedness is $390,000,- 
000, which leaves an increase of $200,000,000 of actual 
appropriations over last session." Is it strange that, in 
the presence of such a humiliation, Mr. Wilson should 
have cried out, in his speech of acceptance, just de- 
livered in the summer palace at Shadow Lawn: "Boast- 
ing is always an empty business which pleases nobody 
but the boaster, and I have no disposition to boast of 
what the Democratic party has accomplished." Mr. 
Wilson has nothing to boast of but failures which sur- 
rounds us on every side, both at home and abroad, so 
far as his performances are concerned. 

Is there any partisan of Mr. Wilson so blind or so 
uncandid as to deny that he has formally and solemnly 
committed himself to each of the nine propositions set 
forth above, either by his printed declarations or by his 
solemn public acts? If he is re-elected he will attempt, of 
course, to make such deadly and undemocratic theories the 
permanent bases of our national life. What kind of a Demo- 
crat, what kind of an American, who believes in government "oj 
the people, by the people, and for the people, ' ' can conscientiously 



28 

support a Presidential candidate standing upon a platform 
composed of those nine propositions, which completely over- 
throw the famous trilogy which Mr. Lincoln proclaimed as 
the true basis of our national life. Under such conditions I 
deem it the duty of every patriotic American, no matter 
what his past political affiliations may have been, to give 
his earnest support to the candidacy of the Hon. Charles 
K- Hughes, a wise and patriotic statesman, whose life has 
been an open book, and whose character for courage, 
candor, and faithfulness has never been impugned. At 
this particular juncture I believe that his views on the 
tariff should be as attractive to thoughtful Democrats as 
to Republicans, because the soundest of our economists 
and financiers believe that, after the end of the present 
world-war, only the enforcement of such views can save 
us from a catastrophe. My personal admiration for and 
confidence in Mr. Hughes as a man add to my pleasure in 
assuring you that I deem it my duty to give him my 
humble and cordial support. Use my name as you may 
see fit in behalf of the candidacy of Mr. Hughes. 

Hannis Taylor. 



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